Quality of Literary Translation. Turkish Translations of E.T.A. Hoffmann's Novella Das Fraulein von Scuderi as a Case in Point

Abstract

The criteria that are used to determine the quality of literary translation have still been commonly discussed in Translation Studies. Even though the functional translation theory, putting specific emphasis on receiver and communication, suggests that source text has lost its importance as a criterion, the concept of 'loyalty' added by Christiane Nord to the functional approaches indicates that functionality can not be the 'only' factor in assessing translation quality. With Nord's concept of 'loyalty', the discuss is on translation quality have become a focus in Translation Studies from the perspective of functionalism, 'loyalty' and ethical attitudes of the translator. The aim of this study is to contribute to discussions on the quality of literary translation, taking two Turkish translations of E.T.A. Hoffmann's renowned novella Das Fraulein von Scuderi (Matmazel Scuderi, trans. Esat Necmi Erendor, 2004; Matmazel de Scudery, trans. Gulperi Zeytinoglu, 2016) as a case in point. First, analysis was conducted to determine the skopos of translations based on paratexts, as suggested by the functional theory. Then, the text-immanent method in Literary Studies was used to identify the sections that convey message of the source text and constitute a translation problem. Translation techniques in these examples indicate that the translators adopted a reader-and communication-oriented approach to overcome translation problems. Nevertheless, because the translators' source text analysis was not comprehensive enough, there are losses in the transfer of source text message.